The Digital Divide Elsewhere

Wed, 01/09/2008 - 10:33am — Willow Cook

The Economist has an interesting profile of Yossi Vardi, an Israeli technologist and investor credited with helping to build Israel's technology industry who is turning his attention to how technology can be used to solve social problems, despite the skepticism of many of his contemporaries.

His message: only a happy few are benefiting from Israel's amazing high-tech boom. “We have become two countries: a high-tech one with few children and very high incomes, and a poor one with lots of kids,” he says.

Things are unlikely to change quickly in any case, not least because the high-tech elite is wary of getting involved in social reform other than through philanthropy. Israeli entrepreneurs dislike and avoid politics even more than their Silicon Valley counterparts do. Yet, Mr Vardi believes, they could be missing a chance to set an example for the world. For it is not just Israel's high-tech industry around Tel Aviv that floats like an island of wealth in a sea of poverty. In places such as Bangalore in India the situation is even worse. A computer-smashing, neo-Luddite backlash may seem unlikely — but why not divert some of the energy from the high-flying tech industry to addressing social problems? “Happiness is relative,” Mr Vardi warns. “The more successful the high-tech sector, the more frustrated and unhappy the rest of society could become.”

.........................................................